Video

Apple requested 4K video content from Sony Pictures in 2013

Cody Lee ∙ Updated April 18, 2018

Apple requested 4K video content from Sony Pictures back in 2013, according to recently leaked documents. WikiLeaks on Thursday dumped another 200,000+ documents stemming from last year's staggering Sony hack, and so far at least one Apple-related story has been uncovered.

AppleInsider points to a materials access letter from Culver Digital Distribution, an entity associated with Sony Pictures, that serves as a formal agreement for "testing and/or preparing" 4K film and television content for non-exclusive distribution. And it has Eddy Cue's signature on it.

Columba is a new quick reply and quick compose tweak for iOS

Jeff Benjamin ∙ June 18, 2015

biteSMS is long gone, and as such, jailbreakers have been clamoring for an adequate replacement. Well, I've got good news and bad news.

The good news is there's another potential biteSMS replacement available for jailbroken iPhones. The bad news is it's nowhere near as polished as biteSMS and it's simply not ready for prime time.

Columba, as the tweak is called, is available for $2.99 on the BigBoss repo. Not only does it bring quick reply and quick compose to the table, but it also promises scheduled messaging and messaging templates. Have a look at our impressions to read our thoughts on the release.

Review: LaCie Rugged RAID 4TB external drive – a good choice for Mac?

Jeff Benjamin ∙ Updated April 18, 2018

For the past few weeks, I’ve been testing out the Neil Poulton designed LaCie Rugged RAID portable hard drive. This drive, with its can’t-miss color, is specifically designed to stand up to tough environments.

The Rugged RAID features a rubber non-slip casing that will help it absorb impacts and stand up to harsh conditions. In fact, it’s dust, water, and shock resistant. If you’re someone who travels with an external hard drive, then you’re automatically more susceptible to all three of these potential failure-inducing scenarios. This can make the LaCie drive an attractive prospect.

Not to be confused with similar-looking drives in the LaCie lineup, this Rugged RAID drive actually ships with two independent hard drives pre-configured with RAID 0 for a total of 4TB of space. This provides end users with lots of headroom and extremely fast read and write speeds.

But hard drive speed isn’t the only thing fast about this drive. The LaCie Rugged RAID is also equipped with a USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt connection for high speed I/O up to 240MB/s. Even better is the fact that the Thunderbolt connection is bus powered, which makes it easy to travel with.

Needless to say, I’ve had high expectations for this hard drive ever since it was first announced. Does the LaCie Rugged RAID live up to this OS X user’s expectations? Read and watch the full review to find out.

iOS 9 Picture-in-Picture feature hacked to run Doom

Cody Lee ∙ Updated April 18, 2018

Developer Adam Bell has hacked together a demo of the popular first-person shooter game Doom running on an iPad in iOS 9's Picture-in-Picture mode. A video shows him opening apps and performing other functions on his iPad, while a demo of Doom runs in a smaller window.

Bell says that his iPad isn't jailbroken, and he's not using any kind of process injection. His method involves the use of public developer APIs, which means there's theoretically nothing stopping devs from implementing this in their apps, although it's unlikely Apple would approve it.

Cellular Continuity allows for phone calls on iPads even when your iPhone is off

Jeff Benjamin ∙ Updated April 18, 2018

Last week, it was reported that cellular Continuity would be making its way to iOS 9. The first carrier to support cellular Continuity is T-Mobile, which is unsurprising; it was the first to adopt Wi-Fi calling on iPhone as well.

Cellular Continuity allows you to use the Continuity features that debuted with iOS 8, features such as the ability to answer phone calls destined for your iPhone on Macs and iPads, without needing the involved devices to be connected to the same Wi-Fi network.

That means that you'll be able to leave your iPhone at home, and still receive phone calls on your iPad or other valid device while away from home and connected to the Internet via cellular or Wi-Fi.

But it goes deeper than that. After testing out this new feature on the iOS 9 beta, the Continuity features appear to be truly bound at the cellular network level. In fact, I could receive phone calls on my iPad while my iPhone was completely turned off. Watch our video demonstration for more insight.

You can now watch Apple’s WWDC 2015 keynote on YouTube

Cody Lee ∙ June 15, 2015

It's taken a week, but Apple has finally uploaded this year's WWDC keynote to YouTube. The replay has been available as an embedded video on Apple's website, but it required that you be on a device with QuickTime installed to watch it.

So folks who missed Apple’s WWDC keynote last week, or would just like to watch it again, things have just been made much easier. You can now view it within YouTube's desktop or mobile web app, or via the native mobile YouTube app.

Apple posts four new ‘Shot on iPhone 6’ videos

Cody Lee ∙ Updated January 28, 2016

Apple has added four new clips to the World Gallery films section of its "Shot on iPhone 6" microsite. The company launched the Shot on iPhone 6 campaign earlier this year, showcasing beautiful photos and videos taken with its latest smartphones.

The new videos are very similar to the previous ones, in that they are 15 seconds long and accompanied by an analogous soundtrack. They were captured by photographers from countries around the world, including the US, Australia and Norway.

iOS 9 reinvigorates iPad power users

Jeff Benjamin ∙ Updated April 18, 2018

WWDC 2015 was filled with shock and awe, at least for me, a former iPad user. In the past, I've tried my best to use my iPad for productivity, namely writing blog posts and the like. While this can be achieved with relative success, the iPad as we currently know it still lacks from a productivity standpoint.

The iPad that we know today doesn't have the ability to truly multitask—i.e. run two apps at the same exact time, and interface with those two apps at the same exact time. Although some prominent bloggers, most notably Mac Stories' Frederico Viticci, are able to aptly make due with this limitation, it's always been something that's pushed me back to my MacBook.

No matter how hard I've tried, and trust me, I've tried dozens of times, I always end up abandoning my plans of creating an iPad workflow that genuinely works for me. With WWDC 2015, and the release of iOS 9, I finally feel like we're on the precipice of something great.

The iPad Air 2, in particular, heavily benefits from iOS 9, but all iPads will benefit in a major way. Here are 6 outstanding new productivity features that promise to supercharge the workflow of those of you who use the iPad as a work machine.

Apple posts ‘Backstage’ video shown during WWDC keynote

Cody Lee ∙ Updated January 28, 2016

Apple posted a new video to its YouTube channel Thursday night called "Backstage." Those who watched Monday's WWDC keynote will recognize the comedy sketch, which aired at the beginning of the live stream before Tim Cook took the stage.

The four and a half minute video stars SNL alum Bill Hader as director David LeGary, who is attempting to produce an over-the-top opening number for WWDC. It features several celebrity cameos, and inside jokes about apps and Silicon Valley.

Vine updated with new search feature for finding and discovering videos

Cody Lee ∙ Updated October 14, 2018

Twitter updated its 6-second video sharing app Vine today, bringing the iOS client to version 3.4. The change log only includes a single item, but it's a significant one for users who have ever had trouble tracking down a clip: proper search.

Since its inception, or close to it, users have been able to search Vine for users and hashtags, but this returned extremely limited results, and made it nearly impossible to discover or track down older, popular videos. But that changes today.

WWDC 2015 keynote posted to iTunes as a downloadable high-definition video podcast

Christian Zibreg ∙ June 9, 2015

Following promotional footage for Apple Music that the Cupertino company posted to its YouTube channel along with the inspirational 'App Effect' video, the entire keynote presentation has now been uploaded to iTunes and made available to everyone in the form of a video podcast.

In case you haven't had a chance to sit through the whole keynote talk yesterday, you can now download the video to your Mac, iPhone, iPod touch or iPad and watch it on your own time.

A look at iOS 9’s jailbreak-inspired features

Jeff Benjamin ∙ Updated April 18, 2018

iOS 9 has brought a lot of new features to the table, and many of those features have been borrowed, whether by coincidence or not, from already existing jailbreak tweaks. In this post, I summarize some of the tweaks that have been natively added to iOS 9 beta 1. Did your favorite tweak make the cut?